Keep up the good work r/pics, this last one had me wondering if you were actually r/maliciouscompliance !
I look forward to r/pics being taken over by more “admin-friendly” moderators after this. This is a situation where they accept what Reddit is going to do; or they should leave. Either they want to lead a community on Reddit, as it stands today with the corporate situation and the need for aggressive profit in anticipation of the IPO, or they should leave. Because the way I’ve been reading the messaging is pretty clear; this is an existential situation for Reddit, that’s why Spez has to push so hard. Either they start generating profit, lots of it, now, and go public soon so the investors can cash out, or the lights get turned off.
You don’t have to stay there. Leave if you’re unhappy. Ignore the platform completely if you disagree with what the company is doing. Because the platform is the way the company nominally makes money. Investors and customers expect money to be made and exceed costs. Unless the mods of r/pics have a plan to make the company more profitable (adding C-levels is definitely not that, BTW), that doesn’t involve the jamming the API costs, reducing overall users (and thus server loads), and pushing more users to interact with the advertising, leave or accept the situation as it is.
The record so far is that without a mod crossing lines the sub just stays restricted. Effectively shutdown.
You may look forward to it but I doubt it will happen.
I hope reddit enjoys the loss of traffic after they shut down this sub. I know I will.
Then more people who understand and acknowledge where the company stands right now, and where the platform stands in relation to that, need to “cross lines” in redditrequest. Either that, or more people need to accept that Reddit as a whole will probably be gone in a few months.
So reddit had basically broken the unwritten agreement it had with the community - the ones who gave it content that made it valuable as a company.
If they can’t survive without dishonouring that agreement then maybe it’s not such a bad thing if they don’t survive.
imagine working for a corp for 15 years for free 💀
I think there’s always been a bit of an unspoken understanding between Reddit and its moderators: Reddit provides the platform; moderators get to run their communities as they see fit (as long as they’re not doing anything that gets Reddit in trouble). And with this framing, moderation didn’t feel like working for Reddit, it felt like working for your community. It was always seen as fair enough if Reddit makes back to money to pay for the platform they’re providing. It felt like wins all round: Reddit makes money, moderators get to have somewhere to maintain their communities and shape them as they see fit, users get communities they can join.
It’s only now that Reddit’s interfering with how moderators run their communities and interact with the platform that people are seeing it as working for Reddit. It doesn’t feel like a collaborative effort any more, but rather Reddit just wanting unpaid labourers. The unspoken agreement feels like it’s been broken. That doesn’t retroactively make all the moderation done in the past count as working for Reddit (even though Reddit obviously benefitted from it), but it does mean that any moderation going forward is something that should be viewed through that lens.
It’s that one clause that’s the whole hangup right now.
as long as they’re not doing anything that gets Reddit in trouble
Reading between the lines of everything Spez said, there’s one abundantly clear fact - Reddit is not profitable - and that’s a big problem, one the board and everyone is pushing to see fixed at all costs. Investors and ownership expect ROI, customers expect ROAS. They’re not getting it, and they’re getting to the end of the rope. I believe we’re coming to a real existential issue for Reddit now - either they get profitable and drag the company over the line to the IPO (so that all the investors can cash out), or there’s no more Reddit. Either you work with the company to bring profits, or you’re a cost needing to be cut.
The thing is, they need to be accessible or they are liable for lawsuits if I understood it right. They took all the labour TPAs do in this regard for granted. So much so they weren’t even aware it was necessary and had regulations in the first place.
Profitability needs somebody who understands what their product is and what kind of legal requirements they need to fulfill. So even under the profitability lens their behavior is destructive.
This does kinda explain why reddit is behaving like this. However going too far in cost cutting- well it’s like cutting off your own arms and legs. So reddit as we know it may be doomed either way. Can’t survive if they give into the protests but also can’t survive once the mods and subs have been irreversibly alienated.
I don’t get why people are clinging to the idea that reddit will suddenly give a fuck. They are unprofessional, rude, liars. It doesn’t matter if they bend down and kiss your ass with a million false promises. They won’t follow through.
Look at what happened to interestingasfuck, they are approaching a week with no mods and completely locked down. You can easily make reddit implode themselves with their hubris of mods being easily replaceable. They have shown that is not true. Y’all will be removed anyway before the IPO, they won’t risk this again. So hurry up and let them implode before they have time to figure out an alternative before the IPO
what I don’t get is why someone would go out of their way to try and convince somebody else that a protest is meaningless while the protest is going on. why would you take time to convince others to stop, what is there even to gain from that? only reddit would want that. if the protest was truly meaningless you wouldn’t have to argue against at all. clearly the protest have an effect on you and on reddit.
Reddit does give a fuck, though. If they didn’t give fucks, they wouldn’t be trying to fuck with the protests (eg, by forcing subs open or removing mods). Whether or not Reddit would actually do any of the things protestors want is a different question, but clearly the protests do at least hurt Reddit and Reddit would dearly like them to stop.
I agree, I meant don’t give a fuck as in suddenly change their mind about the API changes. They give a lot of fucks about making everyone bend to their whim. They give so many fucks they will willingly shut down subreddits themselves
The protest was working and they should keep it going
yeah still throw in a fuck shit for good measure. kind of sus how the red words are all square as shit if you ask me
I applaud their resilience and well thought out solutions, however the damage is done for me. I’ve moved on, they really should as well, take their experience somewhere that will be appreciated. Good luck /r/pics, you’re gonna need it…